AHPRA Compliance Training

Anyone who creates or approves your marketing should attend: practitioners, practice owners and managers, reception staff who post on social media, and any external contractors who write content for you. If a person can publish something in your practice’s name, they benefit from knowing the rules.

That group is usually wider than practices expect. A receptionist replying to a Google review, a nurse sharing a photo on Instagram or a freelance copywriter updating a service page can all create advertising under the National Law. The rules apply to the advertising itself, whoever wrote it, so a gap in knowledge anywhere in the chain can cause problems.

When we plan a session, we ask who touches each of your channels, including your website, social media, email, review responses and printed material. We then suggest who should be in the room and whether some people need a shorter or more focused version. If contractors can’t attend, the summary guide and checklist give them a shared reference to work from.

No. We’re marketing specialists who know the advertising guidelines well, not lawyers. The training explains the rules and how to apply them in everyday marketing, using the kinds of posts, pages and ads your team actually produces.

That practical focus is the point. Many compliance problems in health advertising come from day-to-day decisions: how a service is described, whether a review gets shared, what an offer says. We help your team recognise the risks under the National Law and the AHPRA guidelines, ask the right questions before publishing and know when something needs a closer look.

For complex legal questions, we recommend independent legal advice, whether that’s a health lawyer or your professional indemnity insurer. If a question comes up during training that goes beyond marketing practice, we’ll say so plainly and suggest you take it to one of those advisers rather than guess. That way your team gets confident, practical guidance for everyday work and the right expert input for the harder cases.

Yes. We deliver training in person or by video call, and we can record a session for staff who join your practice later. You can choose whichever format suits your team and your schedule.

Online sessions work well for busy clinics, part-time staff and practitioners who consult across different sites, because nobody has to travel or block out a whole morning. We keep them interactive, with time for questions and the chance to look at real examples from your own website or social media together on screen. In-person sessions suit teams who prefer to workshop examples around a table.

A recording is useful for anyone who misses the live session and for future team members, so the same baseline knowledge stays in the practice as people come and go. Before the session, we’ll confirm the platform you prefer, who will attend and whether you’d like it recorded, so everything is set up in advance and the time is spent on the content.

At least once a year, and whenever the guidelines change or new team members start managing your marketing. An annual refresher keeps the rules front of mind, because habits drift over time and new channels or campaigns raise questions that weren’t covered before.

Changes in your team matter as much as changes in the rules. If a new practice manager takes over your social media, or you bring in a contractor to write blog posts, they need the same grounding as everyone else. A short refresher at that point is usually more effective than waiting for the next scheduled session.

We send short updates in between when something important changes, such as new or revised guidance from AHPRA or the TGA. Those updates explain what has changed and what it means for your marketing in practical terms. If a change is significant enough to warrant a fresh session, we’ll let you know and plan one with you, so your team isn’t relying on rules that have since moved.

It depends on your team size and what you want to cover. We plan it with you and keep it practical, with time for questions about your own channels, rather than running a fixed-length lecture.

A small team focused on social media and reviews will need less time than a larger practice that also runs paid ads, email campaigns and cosmetic services with additional guidelines to consider. Before the session, we talk through who is attending, which channels you use and any areas where you already have questions or concerns. That shapes the agenda and the length.

We also think about how your practice runs. Some teams prefer one longer session, while others find it easier to split the material into shorter blocks around clinic hours. Once we’ve agreed the scope, we’ll give you a clear outline of what will be covered and how long to set aside, so you can roster staff and protect the time.

Yes. Practitioners are personally responsible for their advertising, so we are happy to include them, and we can run a shorter session just for them. Under the National Law, a registered practitioner can be held accountable for advertising about their services, even when someone else wrote or published it.

Including practitioners in the main session has real benefits. The people approving content and the people creating it share the same understanding, which makes sign-off quicker and reduces back-and-forth. It also gives staff confidence to raise concerns when something doesn’t look right.

A practitioner-only session suits doctors, dentists and allied health professionals with limited time between patients. We focus on what they’re most likely to be asked to approve or say themselves: service descriptions, social media posts, comments to the media and responses to reviews. If your practitioners have specific questions about their own profession’s guidance, we can build those into the session as well.

Yes. We can run one online session for everyone or separate sessions for each site. The right choice usually depends on how your marketing is managed across the group.

A single online session works well when marketing is handled centrally and you want every location working from the same understanding of the rules. Everyone hears the same examples and answers, which helps keep standards consistent across the websites, social accounts and review responses for each clinic.

Separate sessions suit groups where each site has its own team posting content, offers different services or serves a different patient mix. A cosmetic clinic in one location and a general practice in another will have quite different questions, so we can tailor each session to the people and services involved while keeping the core content consistent. When we plan training for a multi-site group, we ask who manages marketing at each location and how approvals work, then recommend a format. Recording a session is also an option for staff who can’t attend on the day.

We update our materials and offer a refresher. If a change directly affects a client, we get in touch, so you’re not left to find out on your own.

Health advertising guidance does shift over time. AHPRA and the National Boards revise guidelines, the TGA updates its requirements for advertising therapeutic goods, and specific areas such as cosmetic procedures have had new guidance in recent years. When that happens, we review our training content so the summary guides, checklists and examples reflect the current position.

For practices we work with, we look at whether the change affects what you’re already publishing, for example a service page, an offer or the way reviews appear on your site. If it does, we’ll explain what has changed and what we suggest updating. If a refresher session makes sense for your team, we’ll plan one with you. For questions about how a change applies to you legally, we recommend checking with a health lawyer or your indemnity insurer.

The training covers the advertising rules, testimonials, social media and reviews, before-and-after images, cosmetic advertising, TGA requirements and patient privacy. Together these are the areas where practices most often run into trouble.

• The National Law advertising rules and AHPRA guidelines
• Testimonials, reviews and social media
• Before-and-after images and cosmetic advertising
• TGA rules on advertising therapeutic goods
• Patient privacy and the Australian Privacy Principles

We explain each topic in plain terms and use practical examples, so your team understands not just what the rules say but how they apply to a post, a web page or a review response. We weight the session towards the channels and services your practice actually uses. A physiotherapy clinic that doesn’t offer cosmetic services won’t need the same depth there as a cosmetic clinic, so we agree the focus with you beforehand.

Yes. Each person gets a short summary guide and checklist to keep. They’re designed to be used after the session, when someone is about to publish a post, approve a web page or respond to a review.

The summary guide recaps the key rules covered in training in plain language, so attendees don’t have to rely on memory or search through lengthy official documents. The checklist is a quick set of questions to run through before anything goes live, which helps turn the training into a habit rather than a one-off event.

It helps to keep the checklist somewhere easy to reach, such as the shared folder or system your team uses for content approvals. When guidelines change, we update our materials so you’re working from the current version. If you’d like copies for contractors or staff who couldn’t attend, let us know and we can arrange that, so everyone who touches your marketing works from the same reference.

Yes. We use examples from your profession so the rules are easy to apply. A physiotherapy clinic, a dental practice and a cosmetic clinic face different questions, so generic examples only go so far.

Before the session, we look at the services you offer and the channels you use, and we may look at a sample of your existing marketing such as service pages, social posts or ads. That lets us choose examples that feel familiar to your team and highlight the areas where your profession has specific guidance or extra care is needed, for instance cosmetic procedures or the advertising of therapeutic goods.

Tailoring also means pitching the session at the right level. A team that’s already confident with the basics may want more time on grey areas and real scenarios, while a newer team may need a firmer grounding first. We agree the focus with you in advance, so the session feels relevant to your practice from the start.

Yes. A shorter induction session or recorded module can be arranged, so new team members learn the rules before they start posting, writing or approving marketing on your behalf.

New starters are sometimes handed social media or review responses early on, and they won’t always know that health advertising has its own rules. An induction session covers the essentials in a compact format and gives them the chance to ask questions about the channels they’ll be managing. A recorded module suits practices that take on staff regularly or at different times, since it can be watched whenever someone starts.

Either option keeps new people working from the same baseline as the rest of your team. New staff also receive the summary guide and checklist, so they have a reference to return to. If you let us know when someone is joining and what their role will involve, we can arrange the most suitable option before they take on any marketing tasks.